This article was originally published on Indian Express by Partha Sarathi Biswas
Ashaya recycles multi-layered plastics into high-quality materials and products and its brand ‘Without™’ has already launched a brand of sunglasses made from packets of chips.
Pune-based startup Without™ by Ashaya won the Lakme Fashion Week’s Circular Design Challenge and founder Anish Malpani is beyond thrilled. “I had already told my team that our reaching the final was an achievement in itself. We will now expand our work and scale up our operations,” says Malpani.
Ashaya recycles multi-layered plastics into high-quality materials and products and its brand ‘Without’ has already launched a brand of sunglasses made from packets of chips. For the fashion week, Malpani says, they had to come up with a new range of sunglasses as well as accessories like rings, necklaces and pendants.
“Normally, it takes around six months from conception to designing but our team of in-house designers, Shreyas Kulthe and Mohammad Rizwan, managed it in two months,” he says. Malpani and his team also had help from Pune-based designer Karishma Shahani-Khan.
Without founder Anish Malpani
Multi-layered plastic is the bugbear in the world of plastics, given the difficulties it presents in recycling. Used mostly in food packaging, its contamination and usage of various materials make it almost impossible to recycle. Ashaya has managed to come up with a solution that allows the extraction of high-quality material which can then be used to make objects. The startup has raised a round of pre-seed funding and is in the process of upscaling its production.
Ashaya’s business model entails end-to-end circularity with waste pickers being part of the manufacturing process and the Lakme Fashion Week and its emphasis on ‘circular fashion’ makes it a perfect platform for the startup to showcase its products.
The Circular Design Challenge looks at circularity as the key design component and waste as a resource. This challenge is in collaboration with R| Elan and the United Nations in India. The first prize is Rs 15 lakh.